I gave in and asked him about her the other night while I helped him upstairs to bed. Dad blathered on about his regrets, but didn’t answer the question. I knew he heard me.
Now Jeremy Ellis is stalking my girl through libraries, and fuck knew the real reason why. He may have told her it was to spy on us.
Bullshit.
We kept Quinn around for months. Fucking her and letting her live in our house. Jeremy was quick to snatch her up. Five minutes into her scorned-woman ranting, he’d figure out she didn’t know anything worth using. We never took her on collection runs. Arsenio didn’t bring her on outings. We never let Quinn get an inside on what we do.
Ellis didn’t have a reason to believe it’d be different with the girl we had for less than three weeks.
So what does he really want from her? Why did Cavendish choose her? Why does my father refuse to talk about her?
“I want to know what makes Rainey de Souza so special.”
“Ask yourself that,” she forced out, squeezing on my fingers. Her nails pierced my shoulders, breaking skin as her orgasm took her.
“You’re the one who chose me.”
***
Rainey
Cairo shifted my boneless heap to the passenger seat. I had no idea what prompted his sudden desire to give me an orgasm. Maybe he thought it’d scramble my mind and make me easy to question. Either way, I was his to tease and torture once again.
Cairo hopped out of the car and casually strode up the drive. Dressing quickly, I chased after him, and curled around his arm.
“Where are we?”
“Legend’s parents’ place,” he replied. “Ellis and his crew are staked out at ours.”
“Goodness. A brawl is broken up by gunfire and campus police, and they’re out looking for another fight?”
“They didn’t get what they wanted the first time. Naturally they’ll keep coming after us until they do.”
“What do they want?” I asked.
“Surrender.”
I traced the lines of his hard, handsome face. I didn’t have to ask the question. I already knew.
The Bedlam Boys would never surrender. There was a single outcome acceptable in a situation like this, the total annihilation of the enemy.
The blood of revolutionaries runs in our veins.
Cairo retrieved a key and let himself inside the mansion. The home of the famous St. Jameses was what I expected of the larger-than-life man whose face took up every advertisement, and voice boomed through the factory floor during distillery tours.
A fountain two stories high claimed most of the driveway. It splashed little droplets on me as we made for the grand glass doors. Inside, Christopher St. James greeted me with a beaming smile, a gorgeous brunette, and his supernaturally handsome son.
Their portrait took over the front wall, standing taller than me. You could put it down to the things I’ve come to know about the man, but if you looked closely at that smile, you’d see the hard set to his jaw and the almost hidden sneer.
Gran hated working with Christopher St. James. He never missed a chance to undercut a deal, reject produce, or try to negotiate the bill even though it was the same as the delivery before, and the delivery before that.
The guys were waiting in the chef’s paradise Legend called a kitchen. Jacques looked like he was in the middle of making another smoothie. The guys lined up along the island arguing back and forth.
Cairo slipped out of my grasp to join them. I hung back in the foyer.
“—this happen,” Legend gruffed. His perfectly coiffed hair was a tousle of flyaways. As wild as the fire in his normally shining brown eyes. “They came for us in our town, in our home! The rumors they spread about the factory going under have spiraled.
“Workers are giving notice, looking for new jobs. We say we’re doing fine and they think we’re hiding something. Whispers are going around about a strike. If we’re doing so well, we can afford to increase wages.”
He brought his fists down on the countertop. “It’s obvious what they’re trying to do! The workers get riled up, go on strike, production shuts down, we lose money, and Foundry swoops in ready to buy us out.”
“Foundry?” I whispered.
“Ellis admitted his father wants the distillery,” Jacques said. “It employs half the town. If Steven Ellis becomes the boss, he’ll have a hold on half the voters.”
“He won’t have shit,” Legend snapped. “He’s not getting the distillery. The return of Crystal Canyon will never make it on the ballot.”
Legend riled up was a rare sight to see. He paced the length of the kitchen—a caged beast searching for its way to you.
“The Crows, and Steven Ellis, have been planning this for a long time,” Arsenio said. “They came in too fast. Outsmarted us too quickly. They must’ve been watching us, taking note of our weaknesses. The collections were the perfect pain point to dig in.”